


Court of Nightmares

by shieraseastar03



Series: ACOMAF [8]
Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: F/M, The Court of Nightmares (ACoTaR), Veritas - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 13:40:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19006918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shieraseastar03/pseuds/shieraseastar03





	Court of Nightmares

They were mostly silent during the flight and winnowing to Velaris. Amren was already waiting in the town house, her clothes rumpled, face unnervingly pale. But rather than gather in the dining or sitting room, Rhys strolled down the hall, hands in his pockets, past the kitchen, and out into the courtyard garden in the back. The rest of them lingered in the foyer, staring after him, the silence radiating from him. Like the calm before a storm.

 

“It went well, I take it” Amren said. Alec gave her a look, and trailed after his father.

 

The sun and arid day had warmed the garden, bits of green now poking their heads out here and there in the countless beds and pots. Rhys sat on the rim of the fountain, forearms braced on his knees, staring at the moss-flecked flagstone between his feet.

 

They all found their seats in the white-painted iron chairs throughout. If only humans could see them: faeries, sitting on iron. They’d throw away those ridiculous baubles and jewelry. Perhaps even Elain would receive an engagement ring that hadn’t been forged with hate and fear.

 

“If you’re out here to brood, Rhys” Amren said from her perch on a little bench, “then just say so and let me go back to my work”. Violet eyes lifted to hers. Cold, humorless. “The humans wish for proof of our good intentions. That we can be trusted”. Amren’s attention cut to the Princess of Adriata. “Shiera was not enough?”. She tried not to let the words sting. No, she had not been enough; perhaps she had even failed in her role as emissary…

 

“She is more than enough” Rhys said with that deadly calm, and she wondered if she had sent her own pathetic thoughts down the bond. I snapped my shield up once more. “They’re fools. Worse… frightened fools”. He studied the ground again, as if the dried moss and stone made up some pattern no one but him could see.

 

Cassian spoke then, “We could... depose them. Get newer, smarter queens on their thrones. Who might be willing to bargain”. Rhys shook his head. “One, it’d take too long. We don’t have that time”.  Shiera thought of the past few wasted weeks, how hard Azriel had tried to get into those Courts. If even his shadows and spies could not breach their inner workings, then I doubted an assassin would. The confirming shake of the head Azriel gave Cassian said as much. 

 

“Two” Rhys continued, “who knows if that would somehow impact the magic of their half of the Book. It must be given freely. It’s possible the magic is strong enough to see our scheming.” He sucked on his teeth. “We are stuck with them”. “We could try again” Mor said. “Let me speak to them, let me go to their palace...”. “No” Azriel said. Mor raised her brows, and a faint color stained Azriel’s tan face. But his features were set, his hazel eyes solid. “You’re not setting foot in that human realm”.

 

“I fought in the War, you will do well to remember...”. “No” Azriel insisted again, refusing to break her stare. His shifting wings rasped against the back of his chair. “They would string you up and make an example of you”. “They’d have to catch me first”. “That palace is a death trap for our kind” Azriel countered, his voice low and rough. “Built by Fae hands to protect the humans from us. You set foot inside it, Mor, and you won’t walk out again. Why

do you think we’ve had such trouble getting a foothold in there?”.

 

“If going into their territory isn’t an option” Shiera cut in before Mor could say whatever the temper limning her features hissed at her to retort and surely wound the shadowsinger more than she intended, “and deceit or any mental manipulation might make the magic wreck the Book... What proof can be offered?”. Rhys lifted his head. “Who is… who is this Miryam? Who was she to Jurian, and who was that prince you spoke of… Drakon? Perhaps we... perhaps they could be used as proof. If only to vouch for you”.

 

The heat died from Mor’s eyes as she shifted a foot against the moss and flagstone. But Rhys interlocked his fingers in the space between his knees before he said, “Five hundred years ago, in the years leading up to the War, there was a Fae kingdom in the southern part of the continent. It was a realm of sand surrounding a lush river delta. The Black Land. There was no crueler place to be born a human, for no humans were born free. They were all of them slaves, forced to build great temples and palaces for the High Fae who ruled. There was no escape; no chance of having their freedom purchased. And the queen of the Black Land... ”. Memory stirred in his face. “She made Amarantha seem as sweet as Elain” Mor explained with soft venom and Shiera opened her eyes in astonishment.

 

“Miryam” Rhys continued, “was a half-Fae female born of a human mother. And as her mother was a slave, as the conception was... against her mother’s will, so, too, was Miryam born in shackles, and deemed human, denied any rights to her Fae heritage”.

 

“Tell the full story another time” Amren cut in. “The gist of it, girl” she said to Shiera, “is that

Miryam was given as a wedding gift by the queen to her betrothed, a foreign Fae prince named Drakon. He was horrified, and let Miryam escape. Fearing the queen’s wrath, she fled through the desert, across the sea, into more desert... and was found by Jurian. She fell in with his rebel armies, became his lover, and was a healer amongst the warriors. Until a devastating battle found her tending to Jurian’s new Fae allies, including Prince Drakon. Turns out, Miryam had opened his eyes to the monster he planned to wed. He’d broken the engagement, allied his armies with the humans, and had been looking for the beautiful slave-girl for three years. Jurian had no idea that his new ally coveted his lover. He was too focused on winning the War, on destroying Amarantha in the North. As his obsession took over, he was blind to witnessing Miryam and Drakon falling in love behind his back”.

 

“It wasn’t behind his back” Mor snapped. “Miryam ended it with Jurian before she ever laid a

finger on Drakon”. Amren shrugged. “Long story short, girl, when Jurian was slaughtered by Amarantha, and during the long centuries after, she told him what had happened to his lover. That she’d betrayed him for a Fae male. Everyone believed Miryam and Drakon perished while liberating her people from the Black Land at the end of the War… Even Amarantha”.

 

“And they didn’t” Shiera said and Rhys and Mor nodded. “It was all a way to escape, wasn’t it? To start over somewhere else, with both their peoples?” Another set of nods. “So why not show the queens that? You started to tell them...”.

 

“Because” Rhys cut in, “in addition to it not proving a thing about my character, which seemed to be their biggest gripe, it would be a grave betrayal of our friends. Their only wish was to remain hidden, to live in peace with their peoples. They fought and bled and suffered enough for it. I will not bring them into this conflict”.

 

“Drakon’s aerial army” Cassian mused, “was as good as ours. We might need to call upon him by the end”. Rhys merely shook his head. Conversation over. And perhaps he was right: revealing Drakon and Miryam’s peaceful existence explained nothing about his own intentions. About his own merits and character.

 

“So, what do we offer them instead?” Alec asked. “What do we show them?”. Rhys’s face was bleak. “We show them Velaris”.

 

“What?” Mor barked but Amren shushed her. “You can’t mean to bring them here” Shiera breathed. “Of course not. The risks are too great, entertaining them for even a night would likely result in bloodshed” Rhys said, “So I plan to merely show them”.

 

“They’ll dismiss it as mind tricks” Azriel countered. “No” Rhys spoke, getting to his feet. “I mean to show them, playing by their own rules”. Amren clicked her nails against each other. “What do you mean, High Lord?”. But Rhys only said to Mor “Send word to your father. We’re going to pay him and my other court a visit”.

 

Shiera’s blood iced over. 

 

The Court of Nightmares.

 

* * *

 

There was an orb, it turned out, that had belonged to Mor’s family for millennia: the Veritas. It was rife with the truth-magic she’d claimed to possess, that many in her bloodline also bore. And the Veritas was one of their most valued and guarded talismans.

 

Rhys wasted no time planning. They would go to the Court of Nightmares within the Hewn City tomorrow afternoon, winnowing near the massive mountain it was built within, and then flying the rest of the way.

 

Mor, Cassian, and Shiera were mere distractions to make Rhys’s sudden visit less suspicious, while Azriel stole the orb from Mor’s father’s chambers.

 

The orb was known amongst the humans, had been wielded by them in the War, Rhys told the princess over a quiet dinner that night. The queens would know it. And would know it was absolute truth, not illusion or a trick, when we used it to show them, like peering into a living painting, that this city and its good people existed.

 

The others had suggested other places within his territory to prove he wasn’t some warmongering sadist, but none had the same impact as Velaris, Rhys claimed. For his people, for the world, he would offer the queens this slice of truth.

 

* * *

 

After dinner, Shiera wandered into the streets, and found herself eventually standing at the edge of the Rainbow, the night in full swing, patrons and artists and everyday citizens bustling from shop to shop, peering in the galleries, buying supplies.

 

Compared to the sparkling lights and bright colors of the little hill sloping down to the river ahead, the streets behind me were shadowed, sleeping.

 

This place... Rhys would risk this beautiful city, these lovely people, all for a shot at peace.

Perhaps the guilt of leaving it protected while the rest of Prythian had suffered drove him; perhaps offering up Velaris on a silver platter was his own attempt to ease the weight. 

 

Shiera rubbed at her chest, an ache building in there.

 

When she returned home, Rhys was waiting in the foyer, leaning against the post of the stair banister. His face was grim. She halted in the middle of the entry carpet. “What’s wrong?”.

 

His wings were nowhere to be seen, not even the shadow of them. “I’m debating asking you to stay tomorrow”. She crossed her arms. “I thought I was going”.

 

Don’t lock me up in this house, don’t shove me aside...

 

He ran a hand through his hair. “What I have to be tomorrow, who I have to become, is not... it’s not something I want you to see. How I will treat you, treat others...”. “The mask of the High Lord” she said quietly.

 

He took a seat on the bottom step of the stairs but she remained in the center of the foyer as she asked carefully, “Why don’t you want me to see that?”.

 

Rhysand met her bewitching green eyes. “Because you started to look at me like I’m not a monster, and I can’t stomach the idea of anything you see tomorrow, being beneath that mountain, putting you back into that place where I found you”.

 

Beneath that mountain… underground. She felt the panic, the cold sweat. Yes, she had forgotten that. Forgotten she would see the court that Amarantha had modeled her own after, that she had be trapped beneath the earth,  where her husband had been murdered and where she held him until…

 

But with Cassian, and Azriel, and Mor. With... him.

 

“Let me help. In whatever way I can” she managed to say. Bleakness shaded the starlight in those eyes. “The role you will have to play is not a pleasant one”. “I… I trust you.”

  
  


“We will need a distraction…” he murmured, “And I could help you to distract them?” she asked, “You could… But I don't want you to… We'll have to think about another option” Rhys confessed. “What is it? Please, If… If can help you, just tell me” she nearly begged, Rhys sighted and said “I would have to… wear my… mask. The one that everyone from outside Velaris knows”.

 

“And what could I do?” she inquired again, “I would have to sit on the throne, to be… vile, and you… You would have to sit on my lap and…” he tried to explain, “Keir is not the kind of male that could get distracted easily, but if he saw me with… But I don't want you to be… forced to represent a role that… We'll find another way, don't worry” Rhys declared. 

 

“But we don't have time… I accept. I accept my… role” Shiera said with confidence and Rhys looked with astonishment at the young princess, “Really? Aren't you afraid?”, “I'm a little but because that place is similar to… It scares me to be in a place like that… Again” she took a deep breath and added “I'll accept to act only if you promise me one thing. You'll have to be close to me and you will have to talk through the… bond or the mind, so I won't feel… alone. I could not bear to enter in a place like that without been sure that you… That you will be with me”.

 

Rhys looked at her green eyes filled with determination and purred “I promise you, Shiera darling, that I will talk to you so much that you will beg me to shut up”, forgetting her worries, the female let out a broken laugh when she heard that words. 

 

* * *

 

 

She sat beside him on the stairs, close enough that the heat of his body warmed the chill

night air clinging to my overcoat. “Why did Mor look so disturbed when she left?”.

 

His throat bobbed. Shiera could tell it was rage, and pain, that kept him from telling me outright, not mistrust. After a moment, he said, “I was there, in the Hewn City, the day her father declared she was to be sold in marriage to Eris, eldest son of the High Lord of the Autumn Court. Eris had a reputation for cruelty, and Mor... begged me not to let it happen. For all her power, all her wildness, she had no voice, no rights with those people. And my father didn’t particularly care if his cousins used their offspring as breeding stock”.

 

“What happened?” she breathed.

 

“I brought Mor to the Illyrian camp for a few days. And she saw Cassian, and decided she’d do the one thing that would ruin her value to these people. I didn’t know until after, and ... it was a mess. With Cassian, with her, with our families. And it’s another long story, but the short of it is that Eris refused to marry her. Said she’d been sullied by a bastard-born lesser faerie, and he’d now sooner fuck a sow. Her family... they... ”.

 

Shiera had never seen him at such a loss for words. 

 

Rhys cleared his throat. “When they were done, they dumped her on the Autumn Court border, with a note nailed to her body that said she was Eris’s problem”

 

Rhys said with soft wrath “Eris left her for dead in the middle of their woods. Azriel found her a day later. It was all I could do to keep him from going to either court and slaughtering them all”.

 

Shiera thought of that merry face, the flippant laughter, the female that did not care who approved. Perhaps because she had seen the ugliest her kind had to offer. And had survived.

 

Beron’s fire began crackling in her veins. Her fire, not his. Not his son’s, either.

 

She took Rhys’s hand, and his thumb brushed against the back of her palm. She tried not to think about the ease of that stroke as she said in a hard, calm voice she barely recognized, “Tell me what I need to do tomorrow”.

 

* * *

 

Shiera was not frightened.

 

Not of the role that Rhys had asked her to play today. Not of the roaring wind as they winnowed into a familiar, snow-capped mountain range refusing to yield to spring’s awakening kiss. Not of the punishing drop as Rhys flew them between the peaks and valleys, swift and sleek. Cassian and Azriel flanked them; Mor would meet them at the gates to the mountain base.

 

Rhys’s face was drawn, his shoulders tense as she gripped them. She knew what to expect, but... even after he had told her what he needed her to do, even after she had agreed, he had been... aloof. Haunted. Worried for her.

 

And just because of that worry, just to get that tightness off his face, even for these few minutes before they faced his unholy realm beneath that mountain, Shiera said over the wind “Amren and Mor told me that the span of an Illyrian male’s wings says a lot about the size of... other parts”.

 

His eyes shot to her, then to pine-tree-coated slopes below. “Did they now”. She shrugged in his arms, trying not to think about the naked body that night all those weeks ago… 

 

“They also said Azriel’s wings are the biggest” she purred and mischief danced in those violet eyes, washing away the cold distance, the strain. The spymaster was a black blur against the pale blue sky. “When we return home, let’s get out the measuring stick, shall

we?”.

 

She pinched the rock-hard muscle of his forearm. Rhys flashed her a wicked grin before he tilted down… Mountains and snow and trees and sun and utter free fall through wisps of cloud. A breathless scream came out of her as they plummeted. Throwing her arms around his neck was instinct. His low laugh tickled her nape. “You’re willing to brave my brand of darkness and put up one of your own, willing to go to a watery grave and take on the Weaver, but a little free fall makes you scream?”.

 

“I’ll leave you to rot the next time you have a nightmare” she hissed, her eyes still shut and body locked as he snapped out his wings to ease us into a steady glide.

 

“No, you won’t” he crooned, “You liked seeing me naked too much”. She let out a laugh and gave him an evil grin. “Prick.”

 

His laugh rumbled against her. Eyes closed, the wind roaring like a wild animal, she adjusted her position, gripping him tighter. Her knuckles brushed one of his wings, smooth and cool like silk, but hard as stone with it stretched taut.

 

Fascinating. 

 

Shiera blindly reached again... and dared to run a fingertip along some inner edge. Rhysand shuddered, a soft groan slipping past herear. “That” he said tightly, “is very sensitive”.

She snatched her finger back, pulling away far enough to see his face. “Does it tickle?”. He flicked his gaze to her, then to the snow and pine that went on forever. “It feels like this,” he

said, and leaned in so close that his lips brushed the shell of her ear as he sent a gentle breath into it.

 

Her back arched on instinct, her chin tipping up at the caress of that breath.

 

“Oh” she managed to say.“If you want an Illyrian male’s attention, you’d be better off grabbing him by the balls. We’re trained to protect our wings at all costs. Some males attack first, ask questions later, if their wings are touched without invitation”.

 

“And during sex?”. The question blurted out. Rhys’s face was nothing but feline amusement as he monitored the mountains. “During sex, an illyrian male can find completion just by having someone touch his wings in the right spot”.

 

My blood thrummed. Dangerous territory; more lethal than the drop below. “Have you found that to be true?”.

 

His heart stopped for a moment and the image of his first time came to mind. He loved his wings but he had hide them for Alyx. For her he would have done anything that...

 

“I’ve never allowed anyone to see or touch my wings during sex” he said quietly.

 

“Too bad” she purred, staring out too casually toward the mighty mountain that now appeared on the horizon, towering over the others. And capped, she noted, with that glimmering palace of moonstone.

 

“Why?” he crooned warily.

 

She shrugged, fighting the upward tugging of her lips. “Because I bet you could get into some interesting positions with those wings”. Rhys loosed a barking laugh, and his nose grazed my ear. I felt him open his mouth to whisper something, but…

 

Something dark and fast and sleek shot for them, and he plunged down and away, swearing.

But another one, and another, kept coming.

 

Not just ordinary arrows, Shiera realized as Rhys veered, snatching one out of the air. Others bounced harmlessly off a shield he blasted up.

 

He studied the wood in his palm and dropped it with a hiss. Ash arrows. To kill faeries.

And now that she was one…

 

Faster than the wind, faster than death, Rhys shot for the ground. Flew, not winnowed, because he wanted to know where their enemies were, didn’t want to lose them. The wind bit her face, screeched in her ears, ripped at her hair with brutal claws.

Azriel and Cassian were already hurtling for them. Shields of translucent blue and red encircled them, sending those arrows bouncing off. Their Siphons at work.

 

The arrows shot from the pine forest coating the mountains, then vanished. Rhys slammed into the ground, snow flying in his wake, and fury like Shiera hadn’t seen since that day in

Amarantha’s court twisted his features. She could feel it thrumming against her, roiling through the clearing we now stood in.

 

Azriel and Cassian were there in an instant, their colored shields shrinking back into their Siphons. The three of them forces of nature in the pine forest, Rhysand didn’t even look at me as he ordered Cassian, “Take her to the palace, and stay there until I’m back. Az, you’re with me”.

 

Cassian reached for Shiera, but she stepped away. “No”. “What?” Rhys snarled, the word near-guttural. “Take me with you” she said. The princess didn’t want to go to that moonstone palace to pace and wait and wring her fingers.

 

Cassian and Azriel, wisely, kept their mouths shut. And Rhys, Mother bless him, only tucked in his wings and crossed his arms, waiting to hear her reasons.

 

“I’ve seen ash arrows” she said a bit breathlessly. “I might recognize where they were made. And if they came from the hand of another High Lord... I can detect that, too”. If they had come from Tamlin... “And I can track just as well on the ground as any of you”. Except for Azriel, maybe. “So you and Cassian take the skies” she said, still waiting for the rejection, the order to lock her up. “And I’ll hunt on the ground with Azriel”.

 

The wrath radiating through the snowy clearing ebbed into frozen, too-calm rage. But Rhys said “Cassian. I want aerial patrols on the sea borders, stationed in two-mile rings, all the way out toward Hybern. I want foot soldiers in the mountain passes along the southern border; make sure those warning fires are ready on every peak. We’re not going to rely on magic”.

 

He turned to Azriel. “When you’re done, warn your spies that they might be compromised, and prepare to get them out. And put fresh ones in. We keep this contained. We don’t tell anyone inside that court what happened. If anyone mentions it, say it was a training exercise”. Because we couldn’t afford to let that weakness show, even amongst his subjects.

 

His eyes at last found mine. “We’ve got an hour until we’re expected at court. Make it count”.

 

* * *

 

 

They searched, but the missed arrows had been snatched up by their attackers and even the shadows and wind told Azriel nothing, as if their enemy had been hidden from them as well.

 

But that was twice now that they’d known where Rhys and Shiera would be.

 

Mor found Azriel and the princess after twenty minutes, wanting to know what the hell had happened. They had explained and she had winnowed away, to spin whatever excuse would keep her horrible family from suspecting anything was amiss.

 

But at the end of the hour, they hadn’t found a single track. And they could delay their meeting no longer.

 

* * *

 

The Court of Nightmares lay behind a mammoth set of doors carved into the mountain itself. And from the base, the mountain rose so high Shiera couldn’t see the palace she had once stayed in atop it. Only snow, and rock, and birds circling above. There was no one outside, no village, no signs of life. Nothing to indicate a whole city of people dwelled within.

 

But she did not let her curiosity or any lingering trepidation show as Mor leaded the Princess of Adriata into the Court of Nightmares. 

 

Rhys, Cassian, and Azriel would arrive minutes later.

 

There were sentries at the stone gates, clothed not in black, as she might have suspected, but in gray and white armor meant to blend into the mountain face. 

 

Mor didn’t so much as look at them as she led Shiera silently inside the mountain-city.

Her body clenched as soon as the darkness, the scent of rock and fire and roasting meat, hit her. 

 

She had been here before, suffered here… Not Under the Mountain. This was not Under the Mountain. Indeed, Amarantha’s Court had been the work of a child. The Court of Nightmares was the work of a god.

 

While Under the Mountain had been a series of halls and rooms and levels, this... this was truly a city. The walkway that Mor led them down was an avenue, and around them, rising high into gloom, were buildings and spires, homes and bridges. A metropolis carved from the dark stone of the mountain itself, no inch of it left unmarked or without some lovely, hideous artwork etched into it.

 

Figures danced and fornicated; begged and reveled. Pillars were carved to look like curving vines of night-blooming flowers. Water ran throughout in little streams and rivers tapped from the heart of the mountain itself.

 

The Hewn City. A place of such terrible beauty that it was an effort to keep the wonder and dread off her face. Music was already playing somewhere, and their hosts still did not come out to greet them.

 

The people we passed, only High Fae, were clothed in finery, their faces deathly pale and cold. Not one stopped them, not one smiled or bowed. Mor ignored them all. Neither of them had said one word. Rhys had told her not to, that the walls had ears here.

Mor led her down the avenue toward another set of stone gates, thrown open at the base of what looked to be a castle within the mountain. The official seat of the High Lord of the Night Court.

 

Great, scaled black beasts were carved into those gates, all coiled together in a nest of claws and fangs, sleeping and fighting, some locked in an endless cycle of devouring each other. Between them flowed vines of jasmine and moonflowers. Shiera could have sworn the beasts seemed to writhe in the silvery glow of the bobbing faelights throughout the mountain-city. 

 

The Gates of Eternity, that’s what she had call the painting that flickered in her mind.

 

Mor continued through them, a flash of color and life in this strange, cold place. She wore deepest red, the gossamer and gauze of her sleeveless gown clinging to her breasts and

hips, while carefully placed shafts left much of her stomach and back exposed. Her hair was down in rippling waves, and cuffs of solid gold glinted around her wrists. 

 

A queen. A queen who bowed to no one, a queen who had faced them all down and triumphed. A queen who owned her body, her life, her destiny, and never apologized for it.

 

Shiera’s clothes, which Mor had taken a moment in the pine wood to shift her into, were of a similar ilk, nearly identical to those she had been forced to wear Under the Mountain. Two shafts of fabric that hardly covered her breasts flowed to below her navel, where a belt across her hips joined them into one long shaft that draped between her legs and barely covered her backside.

 

But unlike the chiffon and bright colors she had worn then, this one was fashioned of black, glittering fabric that sparkled with every swish of her hips.

 

Mor had fashioned her hair onto a crown atop her head, right behind the black diadem that had been set before it, accented with flecks of diamond that made it glisten like the night sky. 

 

She had darkened and lengthened her eyelashes, sweeping out an elegant, vicious line of kohl at the outer corner of each. Her lips she had painted bloodred.

 

Into the castle beneath the mountain they strode. There were more people here, milling about the endless halls, watching their every breath. Some looked like Mor, with their gold hair and beautiful faces. They even hissed at her. Mor smirked at them. Part of Shiera wished she’d rip their throats out instead.

  
  


* * *

 

They at last came to a throne room of polished ebony. More of the serpents from the front gates were carved here, this time, wrapped around the countless columns supporting the onyx ceiling.

 

It was so high up that gloom hid its finer details, but Shiera knew more had been carved there, too. Great beasts to monitor the manipulations and scheming within this room. The throne itself had been fashioned out of a few of them, a head snaking around either side of the back, as if they watched over the High Lord’s shoulder.

 

A crowd had gathered and for a moment, the princess was again in Amarantha’s throne room, so similar was the atmosphere, the malice. So similar was the dais at the other end.

 

The memories came and her body began to tremble. “Remember to stay pretty until I get into the room, darling” Rhys purred into her mind when he felt her, and she was able to made a tiny smirk. 

 

A golden-haired, beautiful man stepped into their path toward that ebony throne, and Mor smoothly halted. Shiera knew he was her father without him saying a word. He was clothed  in black, a silver circlet atop his head. His brown eyes were like old soil as he said to her, “Where is he?”.

 

No greeting, no formality. He ignored Shiera wholly.

 

Mor shrugged. “He arrives when he wishes to.” Her father looked at the princess then. And she willed her face into a mask like Mor’s. Disinterested. Aloof.

 

Her father surveyed her face, her body. And where she thought he had sneer and ogle... there was nothing. No emotion. Just heartless cold.

 

She followed Mor before disgust wrecked her own icy mask.

 

Banquet tables against the black walls were covered with fat, succulent fruits and wreaths of golden bread, interrupted with roast meats, kegs of cider and ale, and pies and tarts and little cakes of every size and variety.

 

Mor went right up to the obsidian dais, and Shiera halted at the foot of the steps as she took up a place beside the throne and said to the crowd in a voice that was clear and cruel and cunning, “Your High Lord approaches. He is in a foul mood, so I suggest being on your best behavior, unless you wish to be the evening entertainment”.

 

And before the crowd could begin murmuring, Shiera felt it. Felt him.

 

The very rock beneath her feet seemed to tremble, a pulsing, steady beat. His footsteps. As if the mountain shuddered at each touch. Everyone in that room went still as death. As if petrified that their very breathing would draw the attention of the predator now strolling toward them.

 

Mor’s shoulders were back, her chin high, feral, wanton pride at her master’s arrival.

Remembering her role, Shiera kept my own chin lowered, watching beneath her brows.

 

First Cassian and Azriel appeared in the doorway. The High Lord’s general and shadowsinger. The most powerful Illyrians in history. They were not the males Shiera had come to know.

 

Clad in battle-black that hugged their muscled forms, their armor was intricate, scaled, their

shoulders impossibly broader, their faces a portrait of unfeeling brutality. They reminded Shiera, somehow, of the ebony beasts carved into the pillars they passed.

 

More Siphons, she realized, glimmered in addition to the ones atop each of their hands. A Siphon in the center of their chest. One on either shoulder. One on either knee.

 

For a moment, her knees quaked, and she understood what the camp-lords had feared in them. If one Siphon was what most illyrians needed to handle their killing power... Cassian and Azriel had seven each. Seven.

 

The courtiers had the good sense to back away a step as Cassian and Azriel strolled through the crowd, toward the dais. Their wings gleamed, the talons at the apex sharp enough to pierce air, like they’d honed them.

 

Cassian’s focus had gone right to Mor, Azriel indulging in all of a glance before scanning the

people around them. Most shirked from the spymaster’s eyes, though they trembled as they beheld Truth-Teller at his side, the Illyrian blade peeking above his left shoulder.

 

Azriel, his face a mask of beautiful death, silently promised them all endless, unyielding torment, even the shadows shuddering in his wake. Shiera knew why; knew for whom he’d gladly do it. They had tried to sell a seventeen-year-old girl into marriage with a sadist, and then brutalized her in ways Shiera couldn’t, wouldn’t, let herself consider. 

 

And these people now lived in utter terror of the three companions who stood at the dais.

 

Good. They should be afraid of them. Afraid of Shiera.

 

And then Rhysand appeared.

 

He had released the damper on his power, on who he was. His power filled the throne room, the castle, the mountain. The world. It had no end and no beginning.

No wings. No weapons. No sign of the warrior. Nothing but the elegant, cruel High Lord the world believed him to be. His hands were in his pockets, his black tunic seeming to gobble up the light. And on his head sat a crown of stars.

 

No sign of the male who had held her in her arms while she cried in Adriata; no sign of the fallen prince kneeling on his bed.

 

The full impact of him threatened to sweep her away.

 

Here… here was the most powerful High Lord ever born. The face of dreams and nightmares.

 

Rhys’s eyes met hers briefly from across the room as he strolled between the pillars. To the throne that was his by blood and sacrifice and might. 

 

Her own blood sang at the power that thrummed from him, at the sheer beauty of him.

 

Mor stepped off the dais, dropping to one knee in a smooth bow. Cassian and Azriel followed suit. So did everyone in that room. Including Shiera. The ebony floor was so polished she  could see her red-painted lips in it; see her own expressionless face. 

 

The room was so silent I could hear each of Rhys’s footsteps toward them.

 

“Well, well” he said to no one in particular, “Looks like you’re all on time for once”. Raising his head as he continued kneeling, Cassian gave Rhys a half grin, the High Lord’s commander incarnate, eager to do his bloodletting.

 

Rhys’s boots stopped in Shiera’s line of sight. His fingers were icy on her chin as he lifted her face. The entire room, still on the floor, watched. But this was the role he needed her to play. To be a distraction and novelty. 

 

Rhys’s lips curved upward. “Welcome to my home, Shiera Cursebreaker”. She lowered her eyes, her kohl-thick lashes tickling her cheek. He clicked his tongue, his grip on her  chin tightening. Everyone noticed the push of his fingers, the predatory angle of his head as he said “Come with me”.

 

A tug on her chin, and she rose to her feet. Rhys dragged his eyes over the princess and she wondered if it wasn’t entirely for show as they glazed a bit.

 

Shiera remembered her role so she stood up and began to walk and climb the steps with her hips teetering with grace, style and strength. 

 

He led her the few steps onto the dais, to the throne. He sat with elegance, smiling faintly at his monstrous court. He owned every inch of the throne. These people.

 

And with a tug on her waist, he perched Shiera on his lap.

 

The High Lord’s whore. Who she had become Under the Mountain, who the world expected me to be. The dangerous new pet that Mor’s father would now seek to feel out.

Rhys’s hand slid along her bare waist, the other running down her exposed thigh. Cold, his hands were so cold she almost yelped.

 

He must have felt the silent flinch. A heartbeat later, his hands had warmed. His thumb, curving around the inside of her thigh, gave a slow, long stroke as if to say Sorry.

 

Rhys began to touch softly Shiera's ribs with his left hand and her right thigh with his right hand, when he did, she trembled a little. “Everything okay, Shiera darling?” he purred through the bond as a distraction for her, “You have cold fingers, stupid prick” she purred back, “My apologies. Is it better now? he asked as he touched the part of the thigh that was covered by the dress. 

 

The members of the Inner Circle started to work and play their roles as Rhys began with his.

 

Rhys indeed leaned in to bring his mouth near her ear, well aware his subjects had not yet risen from the floor. As if they had once done so before they were bidden, long ago, and had learned the consequences. 

 

He was so focused on the feeling of her presence touching him that he almost forgot his role.

 

Rhysand whispered to her, his other hand now stroking the bare skin of my ribs in lazy,  indolent circles, “Try not to let it go to your head”. She knew they could all hear it. So did he.

 

She stared at their bowed heads, her heart hammering, but said with midnight smoothness, “What?”. Rhys’s breath caressed her ear, the twin to the breath he had brushed against it merely an hour ago in the skies. “That every male in here is contemplating what they’d be willing to give up in order to get that pretty, red mouth of yours on them”.

 

The princess waited for the blush, the shyness, to creep in. But she could be strong. She had survived. As Mor had survived in this horrible, poisoned house… So she smiled a bit, the first smile of her new mask. Let them see that pretty, red mouth, and her white, straight teeth.

 

His hand slid higher up her thigh, the proprietary touch of a male who knew he owned someone body and soul. He’d apologized in advance for it, for this game, these roles they would have to play. But she leaned into that touch, leaned back into his hard, warm body. 

 

She was pressed so closely against him that I could feel the deep rumble of his voice as he at last said to his court “Rise”. As one, they did. Shiera smirked at some of them, gloriously bored and infinitely amused.

 

Rhys brushed a knuckle along the inside of her knee, and every nerve in her body narrowed to that touch.

 

“Go play” he said to them all. They obeyed, the crowd dispersing, music striking up from a distant corner.

 

“Keir” Rhys called, his voice cutting through the room like lightning on a stormy night.

It was all he needed to summon Mor’s father to the foot of the dais. Keir bowed again, his face lined with icy resentment as he took in Rhys, thenShiera, glancing once at Mor and the illyrians.

 

Cassian gave Keir a slow nod that told him he remembered, and would never forget, what the Steward of the Hewn City had done to his own daughter. 

 

But it was from Azriel that Keir cringed. From the sight of Truth-Teller. One day, Shiera realized, Azriel would use that blade on Mor’s father. And take a long, long while to carve him up.

 

“Report” Rhys demanded, stroking a knuckle down her ribs. He gave a dismissive nod to Cassian, Mor, and Azriel, and the trio faded away into the crowd. Within a heartbeat, Azriel had vanished into shadows and was gone. Keir didn’t even turn.

 

Before Rhys, Keir was nothing more than a sullen child. Yet Shiera knew Mor’s father was older. Far older. The Steward clung to power, it seemed. Rhys was power.

 

“Greetings, milord” Keir said, his deep voice polished smooth. “And greetings to your... guest”. Rhys’s hand flattened on her thigh as he angled his head to look at her. “She is lovely, isn’t she?”.

 

“Indeed” Keir said, lowering his eyes. “There is little to report, milord. All has been quiet since

your last visit”. “No one for me to punish?”. A cat playing with his food. “Unless you’d like for me to select someone here, no, milord”.

 

Rhys clicked his tongue. “Pity.” He again surveyed Shiera, then leaned to tug her earlobe with his teeth. And damn me to hell, but she leaned farther back as his teeth pressed down at the same moment his thumb drifted high on the side of her thigh, sweeping across sensitive skin in a long, luxurious touch.

 

Her body went loose and tight, and her breathing... Cauldron damn her again, the scent of him, the citrus and the sea, the power roiling off him... my breathing hitched a bit.

 

She knew he noticed; knew he felt that shift in her.

 

His fingers stilled on her leg.

 

Keir began mentioning people Shiera didn’t know in the court, bland reports on marriages and alliances, blood-feuds, and Rhys let him talk.

 

His thumb stroked again, this time joined with his pointer finger. A dull roaring was filling her ears, drowning out everything but that touch on the inside of her leg.

 

The music was throbbing, ancient, wild, and people ground against each other to it.

 

His eyes on the Steward, Rhys made vague nods every now and then. While his fingers continued their slow, steady stroking on her thighs, rising higher with every pass. People were watching. Even as they drank and ate, even as some danced in small circles, people were watching. She was sitting in his lap, his own personal plaything, his every touch visible to them… and yet it might as well have been only the two of them.

 

Shiera felt Rhys fingers exploring her thigh and she didn't know what happened but she opened even more her legs, passing one above the armrest of the throne, granting him a better access. It has been something instinctive, nothing rational but passionate. 

 

Keir listed the expenses and costs of running the court, and Rhys gave another vague nod.

This time, his nose brushed the spot between her neck and shoulder, followed by a passing graze of his mouth. Her breasts tightened, becoming full and heavy, aching… aching like what was now pooling in her core. Heat filled her face, her blood.

 

But Keir said at last, as if his own self-control slipped the leash, “I had heard the rumors, and I didn’t quite believe them”. His gaze settled on Shiera, on her breasts, peaked through the folds of her dress, of her legs, spread wider than they’d been minutes before, and Rhys’s hand in dangerous territory. 

 

“But it seems true: Tamlin’s pet is now owned by another master”. “You should see how I make her beg” Rhys murmured, nudging her neck with his nose. Keir clasped his hands behind his back. “I assume you brought her to make a statement”.

 

“You know everything I do is a statement” the High Lord crooned. “Of course. This one, it seems, you enjoy putting in cobwebs and crowns”.

 

Rhys’s hand paused, and she sat straighter at the tone, the disgust. And Shiera said to Keir in a voice that belonged to another woman, “Perhaps I’ll put a leash on you”.

 

Rhys’s approval tapped against her mental shield, the hand at her ribs now making lazy circles. “She does enjoy playing” he mused onto her shoulder. 

 

He jerked his chin toward the Steward. “Get her some wine”. Pure command. No politeness.

Keir stiffened, but strode off. Rhys didn’t dare break from his mask, but the light kiss he pressed beneath her ear told me enough.

 

Apology and gratitude, and more apologies. He didn’t like this any more than she did. And yet to get what we needed, to buy Azriel time... He’d do it. And so would she.

 

The princess wondered, then, with his hands beneath her breasts and between her legs, what Rhys wouldn’t give of himself. Wondered if... if perhaps the arrogance and swagger... if they masked a male who perhaps thought he wasn’t worth very much at all.

 

A new song began, like dripping honey, and edged into a swift-moving wind, punctuated with

driving, relentless drums.

 

Shiera twisted, studying his face. There was nothing warm in his eyes, nothing of the friend she had made. She opened her shield enough to let him in. “What?”. His voice floated into her mind.

 

She reached down the bond between them, caressing that wall of ebony adamant. A small sliver cracked, just for her. And Shiera said into it, “You are good, Rhys. You are kind. This mask does not scare me. I see you beneath it”.

 

His hands tightened on her, and his eyes held hers as he leaned forward to brush his mouth against her cheek. It was answer enough. And... an unleashing.

 

Shiera leaned a bit more against him, he legs widening ever so slightly. “Why had you stop?” she purred into his mind, into him.

 

A near-silent growl reverberated against her. He stroked her ribs again, in time to the beat of the music, his thumb rising nearly high enough to graze the underside of her breasts.

 

Rhys began to kiss her neck and bit it a little, that made her body tremble with an unexpected pleasure. 

 

She let her head drop back against his shoulder. She let go of the part that said those words alongside them, traitor, liar, whore… And she just became. Shiera became the music, and the drums, and the wild, dark thing in the High Lord’s arms.

 

His eyes were wholly glazed, and not with power or rage. Something red-hot and edged with  glittering darkness exploded in her mind. 

 

Shiera felt how his… hardness was pressing against her butt and she send him a funny grin as she purred “Mmm… I don't see how… This” she said getting one hand closer to his hardness “Will make Keir get distracted if he doesn't see it”, he let out a laugh through the bond and began to approach his fingers next to her groin “You… smart-ass...” he purred. 

 

When she felt his hands approaching her… middle part, she didn't care that she was in a place like Under the Mountain, that they were only playing roles and that they were only doing this to steal the Veritas. Shiera only focused in that with Rhys she was safe.

 

She dragged a hand down his thigh, feeling the hidden warrior’s strength there. Dragged it back up again in a long, idle stroke, needing to touch him, feel him.

 

She was going to catch fire and burn. She was going to start burning right here…

 

“Easy” he said with wicked amusement through the open sliver in my shield. “If you become  a living candle, poor Keir will throw a hissy fit. And then you’d ruin the party for everyone”.

 

Because the fire would let them all know she wasn’t normal, and no doubt Keir would inform his almost-allies in the Autumn Court. Or one of these other monsters would.

 

Rhys shifted his hips, rubbing against her with enough pressure that for a second. The High Lord didn’t care about Keir, or the Autumn Court, or what Azriel might be doing right now to steal the orb.

 

He had been so cold, so lonely, for so long, and his body cried out at the contact, at the joy of being touched and held and alive.

 

The hand that had been on her waist slid across her abdomen, hooking into the low-slung belt there. Shiera rested her head between his shoulder and neck, staring at the crowd as they stared at her, savoring every place where Rhys and she connected and wanting more more more.

 

At last, when her blood had begun to boil, when Rhys skimmed the underside of her breast with his knuckle, she  looked to where I knew Keir was standing, watching them.

 

The Steward was staring unabashedly as he leaned against the wall. Unsure whether to interrupt. Half terrified to. They were his distraction. They were the sleight of hand while Az stole the orb.

 

Shiera knew Rhys was still holding Keir’s gaze as the tip of his tongue slid up her neck.  She arched her back, eyes heavy-lidded, breathing uneven. She would burn and burn and burn…

 

“I think he’s so disgusted that he might have given me the orb just to get out of here” Rhys said in her  mind, that other hand drifting dangerously south. But there was such a growing ache there, and she wore nothing beneath that would conceal the damning evidence if he slid his hand a fraction higher.

 

His hand slid to her upper thigh, fingers curving in. She ground against him, trying to shift those hands away from what he’d learn… To find him hard against her backside.

 

Every thought eddied from her head. Only a thrill of power remained as she writhed along that impressive length. Rhys let out a low, rough laugh.

 

Keir just watched and watched and watched. Rigid. Horrified. Stuck here, until Rhys released him and not thinking twice about why. Or where the spymaster had gone.

 

So Shiera turned around again, meeting Rhysand’s now-blazing eyes, and then licked up the column of his throat. Wind and sea and citrus and sweat. It almost undid her.

 

She faced forward, and Rhys dragged his mouth along the back of her neck, right over her spine, just as she shifted against the hardness pushing into her, insistent and dominating. Precisely as his hand slid a bit too high on her inner thigh.

 

Shiera focused in his hands exploring her gently so she forgot her role and let her instincts free, she leaned against his body, resting her head on his chest as she passed her left hand touching his neck and his hair. 

 

Then she opened even more her legs and Rhys began to touch gently the lower part of her left breast, making her shiver but Shiera passed her hand into his hair with more passion. 

 

When he noticed it, he began to approach his fingers even more inside her black dress and he felt how wet she was. Neither of them said anything through the bond, this was even more intimate, they were only Rhys and Shiera exploring each other, nothing else mattered. 

 

Rhysand found courage and slid his fingers even more so he could touch a little her pussy wet hair. She felt him and turned her head so she could bit his neck with her teeth and lips, claiming more and he obeyed. 

 

He went inside her hair and found out how wet she was really as with his other hand was caressing her breast and nipple. 

 

Rhys touched the surface of her hair sweetly and heard the little groan that escape from the princess through the bond. 

 

Shiera explored him, his hardness pressed against her with more insistence and he let out a little noise that meant how he was trying not to take another step. 

 

Rhys found courage and finally touch slowly the surface of her, he expected Shiera to be mad at him for doing that but she… Shiera let out another groan. 

 

His fingers… For god’s sake, his fingers were so slow…. She didn’t focus on her feelings, she focused on her…. Desire. It was true, she felt an in limitless desire for him to keep touching her in that way. Everything about Rhys made her needed him, his breath on her neck, his mouth on her neck, his hand over her breast and the other… 

 

Shiera sank her fingernails in his right thigh as she began to breathe faster, nearly panting, she felt that she could light herself on fire in that right moment. 

 

Rhys noticing what she was doing with her nails, to contain herself, joined again his courage and went deeper, passing his fingers over her. Shiera's nails went also deeper on his thigh and she bit his neck with more passion. 

  
  


She felt the predatory focus go right to the slickness he’d felt there. Proof of her traitorous body. His arms tightened around her, and her face burned, perhaps a bit from shame, but

Rhys sensed her focus, her fire slip. “It’s fine” he said, but that mental voice sounded breathless. “It’s just your body reacting”. 

 

“Because you’re so irresistible?”. Her attempt to deflect sounded strained, even in her mind.

But he laughed, probably for her benefit.

 

They had danced around and teased and taunted each other for months. And maybe it was her body’s reaction, maybe it was his body’s reaction, but the taste of him threatened to destroy her, consume her, and…

 

Another male. Shiera had another male’s hands all over me, when Tarquin...

 

Fighting her nausea, she pasted a sleepy, lust-fogged smile on her face. Right as Azriel returned and gave Rhys a subtle nod. He’d gotten the orb.

 

Mor slid up to the spymaster, running a proprietary hand over his shoulders, his chest, as she circled to look into his face. Az’s scar-mottled hand wrapped around her bare waist, squeezing once.

 

The confirmation she also needed.

 

She offered him a little grin that would no doubt spread rumors, and sauntered into the crowd  again. Dazzling, distracting, leaving them thinking Az had been here the whole time, leaving them pondering if she’d extend Azriel an invitation to her bed.

 

Rhys crooked a finger to Keir, who, scowling a bit in his daughter’s direction, stumbled forward with Shiera’s wine. He had barely reached the dais before Rhys’s power took it from him, floating the goblet to them.

 

Rhys set it on the ground beside the throne, a stupid task he’d thought up for the Steward to remind him of his powerlessness, that this throne was not his.

 

“Should I test it for poison?” Rhys drawled even as he said into her mind “Cassian’s waiting. Go”.

 

Rhys had the same, sex-addled expression on his perfect face, but his eyes... Shiera couldn’t read the shadows in his eyes. Maybe, maybe for all our teasing, after Amarantha, he didn’t want to be touched by a female like that. Didn’t even enjoy being wanted like that.  She had been tortured and tormented, but his horrors had gone to another level.

 

“No, milord” Keir groveled, “I would never dare harm you”. Another distraction, this  conversation. The princess took that as her cue to stride to Cassian, who was snarling by a pillar at anyone who came too close.

 

Now, walking alone to where the illyrian was, she felt with sadness that she would never feel so free, shameless and desired again. 

 

Rhys saw his mate walking through the room, but he was still astonished with what had happened. Shiera had opened her body to him, had began to touch him gently and when he had touched her, she had groaned a bit.

 

He wasn’t sure if she had been only acting but he hadn't. The only thing that was clear… That she would never want to feel him touching her again. 

 

She felt the eyes of the court slide to her, felt them all sniff delicately at what was so clearly written over her body. But as she passed Keir, even with the High Lord at her back, he hissed almost too quietly to hear “You’ll get what’s coming to you, whore”.

 

Night exploded into the room.

 

People cried out. And when the darkness cleared, Keir was on his knees.

 

Rhys still lounged on the throne. His face a mask of frozen rage.

 

The music stopped. Mor appeared at the edge of the crowd, her own features set in smug  satisfaction. Even as Azriel approached her side, standing too close to be casual.

 

That damn word… He had bore it for over 50 years only because his family and Velaris were safe, he had accepted to pay that price for his people and had accepted with anger that his young mate knew it. 

 

But Shiera didn't deserved that word, she was a sweet princess who had been through lots of sorrows and had accepted to play that role because she wanted to help. 

 

“Apologize” Rhys commanded. Her heart thundered at the pure command, the utter wrath.

 

Keir’s neck muscles strained, and sweat broke out on his lip. “I said” Rhys intoned with such horrible calm, “apologize” he commanded in a deathly voice. Shiera was trembling in fear, she didn't like to be noticed and now everybody was looking at her and the Lord who was yelling in pain because of what he had said to her. 

 

The Steward groaned. And when another heartbeat passed… Bone cracked. Keir screamed. 

 

And Shiera watched… She watched as his arm fractured into not two, not three, but four different pieces, the skin going taut and loose in all the wrong spots…

 

Another crack. His elbow disintegrated. Her stomach churned.

 

Keir began sobbing, the tears half from rage, judging by the hatred in his eyes as he looked at the princess, then Rhys. But his lips formed the words, I’m sorry.

 

The bones of his other arm splintered, and it was an effort not to cringe.

 

Rhys smiled as Keir screamed again and said to the room, “Should I kill him for it?”. No one answered. Rhys chuckled, then said to his Steward “When you wake up, you’re not to see a healer. If I hear that you do... ”. Another crack. Keir’s pinkie finger went saggy. The male shrieked. The heat that had boiled her blood turned to ice. 

 

“If I hear that you do, I’ll carve you into pieces and bury them where no one can stand a chance of putting you together again”. Keir’s eyes widened in true terror now. Then, as if an invisible hand had struck the consciousness from him, he collapsed to the floor.

 

Rhys said to no one in particular, “Dump him in his room”. Two males who looked like they could be Mor’s cousins or brothers rushed forward, gathering up the Steward. Mor watched them, sneering faintly, though her skin was pale. “He’d wake up”. That’s what Rhys had said.

 

Shiera made herself keep walking as Rhys summoned another courtier to give him reports on whatever trivial matters. But her attention remained on the throne behind her, even as she slipped beside Cassian, daring the court to approach, to play with her. 

 

And for the long hour afterward, her focus half remained on the High Lord whose hands and  mouth and body had suddenly made her feel awake, burning. It didn’t make her forget, didn’t make her obliterate hurts or grievances, it just made her... alive. Made me feel as if she had been asleep for nearly a year, slumbering inside a glass coffin, and he had just shattered through it and shaken her to consciousness.

 

The High Lord whose power had not scared her. Whose wrath did not wreck her.

 

And now… now she didn’t know where that put her.

 

* * *

 

The wind roared around Rhys and Shiera as he winnowed from the skies above his Court. 

 

But Velaris didn’t greet them. Rather, they were standing by a moonlit mountain lake ringed in pine trees, high above the world.

 

They had left the court as they had come in, with swagger and menace. Where Cassian, Azriel, and Mor had gone with the orb, she had no idea.

 

Alone at the edge of the lake, Rhys said hoarsely, “I’m sorry”. Shiera blinked, shocked “What do you possibly have to be sorry for?”.

 

His hands were shaking, as if in the aftermath of that fury at what Keir had called her, what he’d threatened. Perhaps he had brought them here before heading home in order to have some privacy before his family could interrupt. 

 

“I shouldn’t have let you go. Let you see that part of us. Of… Of me” he managed to say but was totally unable to look at… his mate.

 

Shiera had never seen him so raw, so... stumbling.

 

Shiera was still trembling and Rhys tried to calm her “I'm sorry… I didn't wanted to scare you” he whispered, “It's just that… You… You attacked him, and I was afraid because everyone was staring at.. me. I don't like to be watched by lots of people,  and… I'm the one who is sorry, what he said… I know why you attacked him and I'm sorry that you had to hear…” Shiera whispered but her voice betrayed her. 

 

She didn’t know what to make of what had been done. Both between them and to Keir. But it had been her choice. To play that role, to wear these clothes. To let him touch her. But... she said slowly “We knew what tonight would require of us. Please… please don’t start... protecting me. Not like that”.

 

He knew what she meant. He had protected her Under the Mountain, but that primal, male rage he had just shown Keir... A shattered study splattered in paint flashed through her memory.

 

Rhys rasped, “I will never, never lock you up, force you to stay behind. But when he threatened you tonight, when he called you... ”. His voice broke for a moment.

 

Whore. That’s what they had called him. For fifty years, they had hissed it. She had listened to Lucien spit the words in his face. 

 

Rhys released a jagged breath. How could he tell her that the mating bond had pulled him to the limit, to protect… his mate. 

 

“It’s hard to shut down my... instincts” he finally explained.

 

Instincts. Just like... like someone else had instincts to protect, to hide her away. 

 

“You seemed to be going along just fine with it, until Keir said...”,  “I will kill anyone who harms you” Rhys snarled, “I will kill them, and take a damn long time doing it”. He panted. “Go ahead. Hate me, despise me for it”.

 

“You are… my friend” she said quietly, and her voice broke on the word. She hated the tears that slipped down her face. Shiera didn’t even know why she was crying. Perhaps for the fact that it had felt real on that throne with him, even for a moment, and .. and it likely hadn’t been. Not for him. 

 

“You’re... my friend, and I understand that you’re High Lord. I understand that you will defend your true court, and punish threats against it. But I can’t... I don’t want you to stop telling me things, inviting me to do things, because of the threats against me”.

 

Darkness rippled, and wings tore from his back. “I am not Tamlin” Rhys breathed, “I will never be him, act like him. He locked you up and let you wither, and die”.  “He tried...”.

 

“Don’t you dare to compare me to him” he warned. The words cut her short. She blinked.

 

“You think I don’t know how stories get written… How this story will be written?” Rhys put his  hands on his chest, his face more open, more anguished than Shiera had seen it. “I am the dark lord, who stole away the bride of spring. I am a demon, and a nightmare, and I will meet a bad end. He is the golden prince, the hero who thinks he will get to keep you as his reward for not dying of stupidity and arrogance”.

 

The things I love have a tendency to be taken from me. He had admitted that to her Under the Mountain.

 

But his words were kindling to her temper, to whatever pit of fear was yawning open inside of her.

 

“And what about my story?” she asked when she avoid her sob, “What about my reward? What about what I want?”.

 

“What is it that you want?”.

 

She had no answer. She didn’t know. Not anymore.

 

“What is it that you want, Shiera?” he demanded again.

 

She stayed silent. He… He had never called her only by her name.

 

His laugh was bitter, soft. “I thought so. Perhaps you should take some time to figure that out one of these days”.

 

“Perhaps I don’t know what I want, but at least I don’t hide what I am behind a mask” she  hissed. “At least I let them see who I am, broken bits and all. Yes, it’s to save your people. But what about the other masks, Rhys? What about letting your friends see your real face?”.

 

The words came to his mouth before he could even think.

 

“Because it’s easier not to. Because if I let someone in, if they saw everything… If you saw everything and they walked away... Who could blame you, who would want to bother with that sort of mess?”.

 

He flinched. The most powerful High Lord in history flinched. And Shiera knew that he had hit himself hard… and deep.

 

Too hard. Too deep.

 

“Rhys” she breathed as two tears rolled down her red cheeks.

 

“Let’s go home”.

 

The word hung between them, and he waited for her mouth to bark that it wasn’t her home. 

 

The thought of the clear, crisp blue skies of Velaris at sunset, the sparkle of the city lights…

 

Before she could say yes, he grabbed her hand, not meeting her stare, and winnowed them away.

 

The wind was hollow as it roared around them, the darkness cold and foreign.


End file.
